Google Friends Newsletter - April 2009

POWER TIP

Profile information now in search results

To give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name, we now show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from the profiles you created, a well as a link to the full profiles. We've also added links so it's easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn. Your public profile page identifies you and serves as a hub for your content on the web. If you don't have a profile yet, type [me] into the search box to get started creating one.http://www.google.com/profiles

------------NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

Product Search for your iPhone and Android

It's now easier to make informed shopping decisions with the launch of Google Product Search for mobile. To try it out, go to Google.com in your mobile browser, search for a product, then scroll down and click the "Shopping results" link. You'll see business listings that include where to buy and pricing information so you can find the best deal. For some products, like books and electronics, you can also see other details, including online ratings and reviews. This new feature is optimized for iPhone and Android-powered devices in the U.S. and U.K.http://mobile.google.com

YouTube RealTime

Recently we unveiled YouTube RealTime, a new way to discover what your friends are doing on YouTube. Using a toolbar in the lower right corner of the page, you can see which of your friends are currently online and what they're watching, a history of their recent activities on the site, and real-time notifications when they comment on, "favorite," or upload a video. This builds upon our efforts to make the YouTube experience more interactive and social and follows other updates such as channel feeds, customizable homepage and sharing options (e.g., posting to Twitter or Facebook). Right now, you must have an invitation to try it out, but when you do receive an invitation, you'll have 25 invites to share with friends. We'll be handing out more invitations shortly.http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=RUbB7ZLNsyU

Image Search rolls out Similar Images

We just rolled out an experimental new way to search for images, using pictures rather than words. This is helpful if you are getting image results you like but are at a loss for words on how to narrow them down further. To try it out, go to Similar Images in Google Labs and search for an image. On the results page, click the "Similar images" link under that image to find others like it. Your new results will be tailored based on whatever image you select.http://similar-images.googlelabs.com

YouTube Shows and Movies

There's a new YouTube destination for television shows and an improved destination for movies, where partners like Crackle, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, Starz and many others have made thousands of television episodes and hundreds of movies available for you to watch, comment on, "favorite" and share. We also completed a wider rollout of in- stream ads, which for the first time will be displayed in shows and movies. At the moment, Shows and Movies are only available in the U.S., but we hope to expand to other regions soon.http://www.youtube.com/shows

-------------MISCELLANY

Whether it's the latest news from Washington D.C. or from "American Idol," people around the world go online to search for information on the news of the day. Search trends are a living, breathing reflection of what we're interested in, and April searches were no exception. One very popular topic was the White House puppy, Bo, which led curious Google users to search for [portuguese water dog]. And those interested in weightier political subjects were searching for information about President Barack Obama's first [100 days] in office. Breakout singing star [susan boyle] blew away the search competition thanks to her performance on "Britain's Got Talent," but was ultimately outstripped in popularity by concerned people seeking information about [swine flu]. We offer a variety of tools to help you keep your finger on the pulse of what searchers are looking for. Hot Trends, updated approximately every hour, is great for discovering the news of the moment. Trends is a Google Labs experiment that compares interest in search terms over time. And you can use Insights for Search to compare trends by region and time period, see related and fastest-rising terms, filter for Google News, Product and Image results, and much more.http://www.google.com/trends/hottrendshttp://www.google.com/trendshttp://www.google.com/insights/search/